Not the Madman Theory

I’m only finally getting around to this much-derided article from Wired last week titled “How Poker Theory Explains Ted Cruz’s Convention Speech” by Jason Tanz.

The speech was quite something, by the way, with Cruz very deliberately withholding a specific endorsement of the party's nominee, smirking all the way.

Saw a number of responses to the Wired piece last week, most of which seemed to find the poker analogy weakly presented. Also saw several eyeball-roll references to the article’s reliance on Phil Hellmuth’s “animal types” theory as presented in his 2003 book Play Poker Like the Pros.

You remember Hellmuth’s idea, don’t you? As a way of presenting certain categories of players according to playing styles, Hellmuth described the mouse (squeaky tight), the lion (aggressive and bluffy), the jackal (loose and maniacal), the elephant (unmovable calling station), and the eagle (soaring over the rest as “one of the top 100 players in the world”).

In actuality, the idea to explain different playing styles in such a manner isn’t such a bad one, particularly when addressing relatively untutored players (as most readers of Hellmuth’s book were). The presentation in the book is kind of rushed and a little vague, though, making the “animal types” idea a bit less useful than it could have been.

Meanwhile for someone in 2016 to bring it up as a seemingly unchallenged bit of “game theory” as Tanz does is not nearly as brilliant an idea as the author probably thought it was. He identifies Donald Trump as a jackal, then tries to argue that Cruz is one, too, with his RNC speech showing his willingness to play wild and loose. He then tries to give Cruz some of the characteristics of the lion as well, crediting him in a guarded way with having at least some strategic know-how.

Tanz does successfully highlight the importance of position in poker, noting how Cruz’s place in the speaking order (before others) was disadvantageous. But concluding by saying “maybe Cruz mis-bet” again belies the author’s understanding of the game. (Who says “mis-bet”?)

There’s one other problem in the article, though -- a passing reference to Richard Nixon that also misses the mark. Here’s the line:

“Jackals can be difficult to play against because, as in Nixon’s Mad Man theory, they don’t abide by the rational rules of poker.”

That’s more or less what Hellmuth says about jackals, but that’s not what the “madman theory” actually was. Rather than being an example of someone recklessly betting and raising without any seeming logic, the madman theory concerned projecting the image of someone who “played” that way, but who in actuality did not. It was, at its core, a strategy of bluffing.

Via others, Nixon wished to convince foreign leaders that he was irrational and ready to bomb away on a whim. For example, during the prolonged and mostly unsuccessful negotiations with the North Vietnamese, there were multiple instances of Nixon having National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger try to represent RN in this way, hoping it would frighten the North Vietnamese into a truce.

The comparison in the Wired article is thus entirely misleading, suggesting the “madman theory” wasn’t an actual strategy, but just a literal description of Nixon’s “mad” style of dealing with certain, unfriendly opponents.

Nixon was kind of mad, mind you. But the “madman theory” wasn’t this.

Image: Play Poker Like the Pros, Phil Hellmuth, available via Amazon.

To Call It “Three-Handed” Assumes They’re All Playing the Same Game

I talk politics on this blog occasionally, though like every other non-poker topic I’ve taken up in nearly a decade’s worth of posts I’ll do so only in relation to some poker-related idea. That’s the only restriction I’ve ever followed here on HBP -- to make at least some reference to poker in every single post, even if the link might be as thin as a river bet with fourth pair.

The Republican primaries have been kind of jawdropping in a number of ways, thanks largely of course to the destructive rambling about of bellwether Donald Trump. I wrote a post here almost exactly two months ago about “Trump and the Poker Analogy,” making the point there that in truth all politicians -- especially those running for office -- are always like poker players, or at least always capable of being viewed in such a way.

In the weeks since many have continued to try to piece together a coherent strategy out of the various, sometimes way-off-the-beaten path headlines emanating from the Trump campaign. The very process of trying to look at a campaign as being a “game” played “like poker” imposes a kind of logic upon it, even when one doesn’t exist. We do the same thing at the tables when confronted by strange-seeming plays from an opponent. (If this guy knows what the hell he’s doing, we think, what is that, exactly?)

Trump has many fervent supporters, it’s obvious. It’s also obvious that when asked to address absolutely any issue in any detail beyond introductory rallying-cries he is wincingly unable to demonstrate his understanding or in many cases even to make sense in his responses. But he’s got a seat at the table, and to the befuddlement of others he’s somehow amassed a big, threatening stack. Every hand is now necessarily being played -- by both parties’ remaining candidates -- with a wary eye cast in his direction.

Had the teevee on tonight and that “town hall” on CNN playing featuring the three remaining GOP candidates -- Trump, Ted Cruz, and John Kasich -- each separately appearing to take questions. Most interestingly, I thought, was how each of them in turn made clear he would no longer be willing to support the party’s eventual nominee. This represented a change for all three of them, as they’d each previously said they would support whomever the Republicans eventually chose.

What would be the poker analogy for this?

Would it be like a deal negotiation at three-handed suddenly turning very sour, with all three coming away offended at the terms they had been presented and each of them now returning to the table full of spite versus the other two?

Or is it more like one having tried to shoot an angle, another calling the floor, and a third intervening during the subsequent discussion in a way that causes still more consternation, engendering a lingering enmity between all three once play finally resumes?

Then again, maybe it’s wrong to try to impose the clarity-lending analogy upon the proceedings at all, given that doing so incorrectly makes it seem as though the “players” aren’t in fact each playing wholly separate “games” for which tonight’s “town hall” format that segregating them from each other seemed suitable.

Don’t know what to conclude, really. Other than to think when players start turning on each other -- whatever they are playing -- that’s usually a sign the game is probably about to break up.

Image: “Republican Primary Final Three 2016 - Caricatures,” DonkeyHotey. CC BY-SA 2.0.

Threats

I’m interrupting my brief survey of card games considered to be poker’s “precursors” to share something else today. Back at it tomorrow.

This past weekend, just by chance, I happened to reread Julius Caesar. Took Shakespeare courses in college and taught him here and there amid some lit surveys (usually just the sonnets), but it had been a while since I’d meaningfully spent time with the Bard.

The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death is coming up next month, and with that in mind I decided to download the Complete Works on my Kindle. Without much forethought at all I randomly decided to begin with Caesar. It’s the first step in a plan to read through all 37 plays over the course of the coming year, kind of a belated reprise of my earlier Shakespeare studies.

I say I chose Caesar “randomly,” although it only took a scene or two for me to doubt whether or not there might have been some subconscious motive to the selection. To put it another way, that I might have been fated to make such a choice.

Shakespeare is timeless, which is why four centuries later his plays and poems continue to resonate and provide consistent insight regarding the human condition. That said, the echoes with current events were so loud they threatened to overwhelm what Caesar, Cassius, Brutus, Antony, and others were saying.

Julius Caesar tells the story of a political assassination, based on the actual slaying of Caesar in 44 B.C. that signaled the end of the Roman Republic and subsequent dawning of the Roman Empire first led by Augustus. The play follows a familiar narrative trajectory starting with the conspirators’ plotting Caesar’s murder, the killing itself (coming at the start of the third of five acts), then concluding with the seemingly inevitable battle between Caesar’s killers and those seeking revenge for his murder.

Over the last couple of years I’ve spent probably more time than is healthy studying the Kennedy assassination, reading about and watching coverage of the event while constantly sorting through all of the many theories regarding what actually happened. I even read through the Warren Commission Report not long ago, or at least the summary prefacing the 26 volumes of so-called supporting documents. It began as an innocent digression from my “Nixon studies,” but the JFK rabbit hole can be a hard one to dig out of sometimes.

One of the more complicated conspiracy theories entertained by some regarding Kennedy’s killing describes it as an “inside job” involving many individuals and agencies within his administration, a scenario somewhat resembling what happens in Caesar where those closest to the dictator decide it to be in the public’s interest that he be eliminated. “We shall be called purgers, not murderers,” goes the rationalizing line.

Early on we hear Cassius lamenting how “this man is now become a god” despite being “of such a feeble temper” and unworthy of his power. Brutus agrees he’d “rather be a villager than to repute himself a son of Rome under these hard conditions.” Indeed, at the end of the play, after Brutus has died, Antony credits him somewhat as the only one of the conspirators who acted not out of envy (like Cassius) but out of “a general honest thought and common good to all.”

Such is the perspective assigned to JFK’s killers, or so argue those favoring such a theory. There are several other moments, too, that evoke JFK’s assassination, or at least they do for those of us who find themselves occupied by some of its details.

For example, during the celebration over the defeat of Pompey, Caesar’s repeatedly refuses to accept the crown of Rome from Antony, a scene that gets replicated in a superficial though uncanny way on the morning of November 22, 1963 at the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce breakfast shortly after Kennedy delivered what would turn out to be his last speech. I refer to the moment when the Chamber’s president Raymond Buck gave JFK the gift of a cowboy hat for “some protection against the rain” and Kennedy’s refusal to wear it despite the crowd’s insistent urging.

As I say above, though, the play’s parallels with the contemporary political situation and in particular the increasingly antagonistic presidential race were the most conspicuous for me on this reading. I’m thinking in particular about the current G.O.P. frontrunner and the increasing “alarum” being raised both by the party he represents and by the opposing one, too, over the prospects of his continuing to accumulate delegates and momentum and perhaps even the nomination.

All campaigns consist largely of promises, with each promise falling somewhere on a spectrum between vague and specific, as well as between fantastical and realistic. Candidates gauge voters’ reactions in the form of polls and votes and nudge themselves accordingly up and down each axis to find what seems a favorable position from which to stump. This year, though, one candidate has instead consistently favored threats over promises -- some vague and fantastical, some specific and real -- which in turn has caused others to remark upon the threat he represents by doing so.

Threats are a constant theme in Julius Caesar. The conspirators begin by describing to each other the threat posed by Caesar’s rule, from which come their own threat of violence against him. Caesar meanwhile expresses trepidation to Antony, recognizing Cassius as a threat primarily because “he thinks too much” and “such men are dangerous.” “Such men as he be never at heart’s ease whiles they behold a greater than themselves,” Caesar continues. “And therefore are they very dangerous.”

A little after Casca is talking to Brutus about how fervently Caesar’s supporters are, noting how he seemingly can do no wrong in their eyes. Despite his refusing of the crown, they still showered love on him, Casca explains. “If Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less,” says Casca, causing today’s reader to think of other, similar statements regarding supporters of a certain candidate.

There’s talk, too, about how power might change Caesar, discussion that resembles somewhat speculation about how a candidate making promises (or threats) while campaigning might act differently while in office. For Brutus, the worry is that once he reaches the top of the ladder Caesar will turn his back on those down below. He’s like a “serpent’s egg” concludes Brutus -- better to “kill him in the shell.”

Back at Caesar’s, he speaks a little more boldly to his wife, Calpurnia, about those who might oppose him. “The things that threaten’d me ne’er look’d but on my back,” he says to her, “when they shall see the face of Caesar, they are vanished.” Calpurnia isn’t convinced, beckoning him not to attend a meeting at the senate-house, but Caesar won’t hear it, saying he’d be “a beast without a heart if he should stay home to-day for fear.”

He goes to the senate-house and is killed, the threat against him having been realized. Thereafter come further threats between the anti- and pro-Caesar camps, as well as Caesar’s ghost coming to visit Brutus and threaten his well being. The play then ends in bloodshed with Caesar’s death being avenged and, interestingly, most of the deaths shown on stage resulting from suicides.

Today is yet another “Super Tuesday,” with both parties’ primaries happening in a few more states, including my own. I voted this morning, in fact, a relatively easy process as my polling station is only just a couple of miles up the road from the farm.

Hard not to feel a certain foreboding, though, what with all of the threats being bandied about, including threats of violence (from candidates and from their supporters). The results of today’s doling of delegates will affect what happens next, which will seem a promise for some and a threat to others. I look up at the calendar and realize another coincidence suggesting my choice of Caesar to read having been unsettlingly appropriate.

I refer, of course, to the soothsayer’s threatening line from early in the play.

“Beware the ides of March.”

Photos: Julius Caesar (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953) (top); still from JFK Fort Worth Breakfast November 22 1963 TV coverage, KRLD-TV (middle).

Capitol Games

Last week I mentioned briefly that faux-filibuster perpetrated by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and made a passing reference to coverage of televised poker coverage by way of comparison. Over the weekend I read a piece about Cruz and his bit of political theater which noted how Cruz himself had used a poker analogy to describe his own strategy.

We’re seeing today how the crisis over passing a spending bill to fund the government for the upcoming fiscal year (scheduled to begin tomorrow) is reaching a kind of climax, with a government shutdown now appearing a distinct possibility. The issue goes back to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- a.k.a. “Obamacare” -- and the efforts of some Republicans to have the new spending bill include amendments to it, something the Dems aren’t willing to accept.

Seeing references to this issue as a “bargaining chip” (again, evoking poker vocabulary). Although it doesn’t actually sound much like anyone’s in the mood to bargain.

Cruz’s 21-plus hour speech last week was motivated by his wish to defund the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Responding to a question by his colleague Rand Paul (R-KY) about whether or not he could go along with any sort of middle-ground solution that didn’t involve defunding the new health care law, Cruz couched his negative response in the language of cards.

“In a game of poker,” explained Cruz, “if somebody makes a bet, and then says to you, ‘if you raise me, I’m going to fold,’ [he] will lose 100 percent of [his] poker games.”

In other words -- if I’m following correctly -- Cruz is choosing this way to express an unwillingness to compromise at all when it comes to Obamacare. Cruz (and the other non-negotiating Tea Partiers) is making a bet, he says, and is not going to give his opponent any indication that he might fold (give in) should his opponent respond with a raise, because to do so would be a losing strategy.

Brings to mind players who cannot bring themselves to fold after having put any chips at all in the middle. Of course, table talk can be misleading sometimes. A player could well say he’d fold to a raise, then do something else. That is to say, I’m not sure the analogy is as obvious as Cruz seems to think, and I can imagine several better ones to indicate more clearly an intention not to fold.

Anyhow, watching the news today and the deepening impasse on Capitol Hill, the only poker analogy that comes to mind would be one involving players stalling on the bubble. Or maybe something having to do with not playing with a full deck.

It Goes On and On and On

Was reading about this 21-plus hour “filibuster” by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) this week, with much of the commentary focused on reducing it to a peculiar kind of political performing with little practical consequence beyond the already controversial freshman senator alienating colleagues in both parties. And perhaps promoting his own star among a certain, small segment of the American voting public.

Some of the articles noted how “filibuster” was not really an accurate way of describing the performance, since Cruz knew even before starting that he had no way of achieving his ostensible goal of preventing the Senate from voting on a budget plan to keep the government open through a deadline coming up next Monday and thus maintain funding for the new “Obamacare” law. Thus was the speech and its inordinate length even more strange.

Like I say, Cruz began making enemies shortly after joining Congress this year -- even the iPhone-poker playing John McCain called him a “wacko bird” (along with a couple of others) back in the spring. And his speech contained a lot that appeared pretty wacko, especially out of context, including references to Duck Dynasty, White Castle burgers, the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street film franchises, The Little Engine That Could, Ashton Kutcher, Darth Vader, Toby Keith, and Green Eggs and Ham.

Setting aside the specific political context for Cruz’s marathon play, there’s something curious about the wildly out-of-proportion step of speaking for 21-plus hours in such a forum.

Cruz came a bit shy of the longest ever filibuster speech by Strom Thurmond lasting 24 hours and 18 minutes in which he spoke against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, one of many actions in the South Carolinian’s long career in which he established his lamentable opposition to racial equality. Like Cruz, Thurmond also peppered his speech with a lot of obscure, irrelevant matters, most famously a digression on his grandmother’s biscuit recipe.

I’m thinking yet again about the debates this week about televised poker, and how the long, uninterrupted and unedited broadcasts may be better for demonstrating the game’s skill component, but are much less likely to retain an audience. Thus is TV poker necessarily reduced to highlights and other unusual moments that in real time disrupted the monotony but in an edited package are made to seem representative.

Much as commentators on the crazy-long senatorial speeches focus on irrelevant or tangential biscuit recipes and Dr. Seuss readings, so, too, does an hour-long program condensing a day’s worth of poker focus on the unusual.

Speaking of long-winded politicians, I’ve been continuing my Nixon studies and am now in the middle of his 1,100-plus page post-presidency opus, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon.

I have to read it at home, as it’s too big to take anywhere. I mean, really, I’d need an extra suitcase to carry it on a tourney trip.

I could filibust open somebody’s head with this sucker.